Video updates to entries on 12/24/07 and 12/27/07

I just figured out how to edit a couple of video clips that I've taken with our camera so that they meet the size requirements for Blogger. I uploaded three video clips to previous entries: One of Ethan from Christmas Eve repeating a few of the words that he uses regularly now and two of the jellyfish exhibit at Ripley's Aquarium. Please check out the blog entries on 12/24/07 and 12/27/07 to take a look!

More Fun in Tennessee- Ripley's Aquarium

On the 27th we all went to Ripley's Aquarium in Gatlinburg that is a ton of fun. The kids had a great time watching all of the fish and especially loved the moving walkway that goes through a tunnel under some large tanks containing many types of sharks, lots of fish, and even barracudas. We also enjoyed a really neat display of jellyfish; I wouldn't want to encounter one in the water, but they are truly amazing and unusual to watch. They are surprisingly graceful, and the aquarium pipes classical music in near the display to listen to as you observe them. Hover your cursor over the pics in the slideshow below to view the captions (you can also speed up or slow down the pics by clicking on the "-" or "+" signs in the lower left).

Christmas Visit to Tennessee

On our way down to Pigeon Forge, TN to visit Dan's brother and sister-in-law (Chris and Julie) and their kids (Drew and Sam), we stopped in Knoxville to visit Grandma Q's dear friend Shirley. She recently added a beautiful sunroom to her home as well as expanded her deck. Ethan had a great time stomping around on the deck and exploring every nook and cranny. He especially loved the windchimes that he could be lifted up to reach that Shirley had above the deck.

After lunch, we, Grandma Q, and Gino headed the rest of the way to Pigeon Forge where we stayed at The Preserve (a beautiful resort of cabins up in the mountains that Dan's brother manages). We enjoyed visiting with Dan's family and stayed in Tennessee from the 26-29th. Ethan really enjoyed playing with his cousin Sam who is almost exactly a year older than him. They played with a box that we brought presents in for quite some time and also loved running around the lower level of the cabin that had an air hockey table, a foosball table, and a pool table.

Below is a slideshow of pics that I took on the 26th at Shirley's house and at the cabin.

Christmas Day 2007- Our Family's Puzzle

While Ethan was asleep overnight on Christmas Eve and napping on Christmas day, we worked on a 1000-piece Springbok puzzle, as it is a family tradition to work on a puzzle every Christmas. Amazingly we were able to complete it in less than 24 hours. I stayed up way too late on Christmas Eve working on it though... Here is a picture of the completed puzzle:

Christmas Eve 2007 at Grandma and Grandpa G.'s

Dan, Ethan, Waggles, and I spent Christmas Eve and Christmas Day with my parents and brother Mike. We had a great time opening gifts, doing our annual Christmas puzzle, eating wonderful food, watching "The Nativity" DVD, and just enjoying spending time together. Ethan was ecstatic to receive a TMX Extreme Elmo as well as an Elmo remote control (finally a remote control that he is allowed to play with!) He wore himself out playing with all of his gifts and with the wooden trainset that my Dad built for Mike when he was little.

I created a slideshow of pics of Ethan on Christmas Eve at my parent's house that is posted below.

Below is a video of Ethan saying a few of the words that he uses regularly now. You'll probably need to click on the lower left corner of the slideshow above to mute the music so that you can hear the video.

My Dad's Family Christmas Get-Together

Every year my Dad's family gets together for a big Christmas party- Thanks so much to John and Cindy for hosting all of us year after year! This year was especially fun because it was the first Christmas that Ethan was at least somewhat aware of what was going on! He had a blast running around and playing with all of my cousin's kids, and he really enjoyed unwrapping gifts and playing with the wrapping paper and his new toys. A big thanks to everyone for all of the wonderful gifts! Here are a few pics of our get-together along with a video of Ethan and Katelyn enjoying throwing wrapping paper around after all of the presents were opened. I apologize for the odd perspective on the video... I rotated our digital camera while taking the video, and when it uploaded to Blogger, it started out playing sideways!

Down to One Nap and a New Fondness for Blankies

Ethan is growing up too quickly! We have transitioned him this week from two 1 1/2 hour naps to one 3+ hour nap. It has actually been really easy to switch him to this new schedule, and he has adapted to it very well. It's so strange to have a big chunk of time in the afternoon to get things done-I haven't had that in a long time!
We have been fortunate that, at least up to this point, Ethan has been a great sleeper. When we took the pacifier away at 4 months, he took a little while to learn how to self soothe, but ever since we haven't had any problems. He never found his fingers to suck instead, and he didn't have an attachment to any sort of "lovie" or special item that he required to sleep. It's been really nice not to have to worry about ensuring that we have a specific stuffed animal or blanket with us when we travel or visit my parents in Kokomo. Perhaps until now! As it has gotten colder this winter, I started putting a fleece blanket in the crib with him when he sleeps. He loves holding the blanket and rubbing the fleece between his fingers. He knows that we call it a "blankie", and now whenever I put him in his crib to sleep he'll say "B,B,B" or what sounds like "blankie" and gets upset until you hand him a blanket. He also loves to drag a blankie or multiple blankies (I've seen him with 3 or 4 at one time) around the house with him. Looks like we better ensure that several of these are packed with us when we travel over Christmas!

Highly Recommending Redboxes

If anyone hasn't heard of Redbox before, they are big ATM-like machines that are located in many McDonald's and grocery stores. They are automated DVD rental systems that charge only $1 per day for new release rentals. I had read about Redbox before but had never tried it. I had a coupon for a couple of Blockbuster rentals for free that I tried to redeem the other day, but unfortunately found that the coupon was not valid. That was the first time I'd been in Blockbuster in awhile, and their overnight rental fee for new releases is now $4.29 + tax. So, I decided to try Redbox instead, and I have to say that I'm hooked! You can view what DVDs are in stock at each Redbox on their website and reserve them through the website if you want, you can get promotion codes for free rentals easily, you can keep the DVDs as long as you want for $1/day, they email you a receipt for your transaction, and it is so easy! Since the weather has been so crummy this weekend, Dan and I watched 3 new release movies for $2.12!! We got one free rental (Ocean's Thirteen), and two other rentals (the new Harry Potter movie and the third Pirates of the Caribbean). Anyhow, if you have not tried this yet, I highly recommend it! I foresee Blockbuster going out of business in the near future...

Toys R' Us in the Ice and Snow and Surprise Elmo

It is very difficult for me to stay away from a bargain, even in the midst of a snow and ice storm. The Toys R' Us ad this weekend had a doorbuster sale on Crayola products. Buy 1 get 2 free, NOT buy 2 get 1 free, you actually would get 3 products for the price of one. So, I decided to make the drive yesterday to Toys R' Us during our winter storm. Fortunately I made it there safely (the roads were really not that bad-I just slid once for a very short distance on a hill). And amazingly the store was completely full of customers! I was very surprised to find so many other people willing to head out in the storm to shop for a deal. Anyhow, I happily bought 9 Crayola products for the price of 3 and also saw that they had a display of stuffed Elmo dolls set up for 75% off. Since Ethan has been so into Elmo lately, I decided to buy one for him as a surprise. We gave him the Elmo when he got up from his nap this afternoon, and he was SO thrilled!! Here are a few pictures of Ethan with his new Elmo:

Cookie Eating, I Mean Decorating ;)

Heather in my mom's group at church planned and hosted a really fun cookie decorating event this morning for the moms in our group and their kids. She arranged for us to use a beautiful building at a local park, set up tables covered with paper, supplied many different colors of icing, brought toys and a VCR with Christmas shows for the kids, had Christmas music playing, and brought snacks and drinks for the moms and kids. She also put together great gift bags for the kids that said "Happy Birthday Jesus!" and contained a book of prayers. It was a very fun activity, and everyone had a wonderful time! I brought Ethan's crayola smock to help keep icing off his clothes, and surprisingly he was content to sit on my lap and munch on a sugar cookie while watching me ice and decorate our other cookies. He helped me ice a little bit too, but enjoyed running around playing with toys and interacting with the other kids more. This was the first "real" cookie that he has eaten (other than Gerber graduate cookies that are fortified with lots of vitamins, etc.) He LOVED it!! Lori brought her camera and took a lot of great snapshots of everyone. Here are a couple of her pictures:

Ethan enjoying his sugar cookie and watching me ice cookies

Dancing, Rolling, and Spinning Around

Ethan is a very active little boy. Ever since he became mobile, it's look out world! Some of the neat things he's been doing lately include dancing, rolling, and spinning. If you ask him to dance he does this little stomping jig for you. He has the "rolling" part of Pat-A-Cake down, and he loves to rotate his arms around each other if you ask him to roll. And apparently it is quite entertaining for him to spin around in circles until he gets dizzy and wobbly, as this has become a favorite activity that he does at least several times a day. I took some video footage of these activities tonight, but unfortunately we don't currently have a means to transfer our video to our computer. One of these days I'll update this post with some video of Ethan's dance skills (he's pretty good, so I'm not sure where he got that from because it could NOT have been inherited!) :)

Totally Crazy About Elmo

Ethan has always enjoyed it when we read to him, particularly several Sesame Street books that feature Elmo. He adores Elmo and always lets us know wherever he sees him, pointing and saying "Elmo", "Elmomo" or "Mo" ;) Mom and I took him to Babies R Us the other day, and they had some Elmo stockings hanging on hooks low enough for him to reach. I was carrying him around as he was pointing at them and squealing. I set him down, and he made a beeline for the display chanting "Elmo, Elmo, Elmo" with a grin from ear to ear. Cutest thing ever! It's fun to see him make connections between characters he sees in books and other places he sees the same characters (like on toy shelves). Also, when I change his diaper, I let him hold the new diaper until I need it. Since we use Pampers, many of the diapers have pictures of Elmo on them. He loves it when he gets to hold a new Elmo diaper and will tell me "Elmo diape". He's starting to learn to recognize some of the other Sesame Street characters too like Big Bird, Ernie, Bert, and Cookie Monster.

O' Christmas Tree, O' Christmas Tree, How Lovely are Your Branches, and Ornaments, and Lights

We put our Christmas tree and other decorations up this weekend, and Ethan has been fascinated by them. He constantly walks over to the tree and points to it. We put a superyard up around it and the gifts that I've wrapped so far to keep him out of mischief. Tonight we took the superyard down to get some pictures of Ethan with the tree, and he loved holding the ornaments, checking out the lights, and patting the tree limbs. It was so cute to see his excitement about the tree!

Bubbles and Grandma "Bob"

Ethan has been very good at repeating words to us, particularly those that begin with "B" or "D". One of these words is "bubble"- he especially loves the froth of bubbles that form in his tub during bathtime. It is adorable to hear his pronunciation of "bubble" and to see his excitement when he "captures" bubbles on his hands in the tub.

I had asked my mom what she would like for Ethan to call her- Grandma, Mamaw, Nana..., and she said that she would prefer Grandma. Since Ethan has been learning so many words here recently, I keep asking him to repeat "Grandma". So far he consistently says back to me "Baba" or sometimes something that sounds like "Bob". So, for now, Grandma is aka Bob or Baba :)

15-Month Well Baby Check-Up

Ethan had his 15 month check-up today with the pediatrician. He was 22lbs 7oz and 32 1/8 inches long. He's consistently been in the 75-90th percentile for height and 10-25th percentile for weight, and this visit tracked him in those same percentiles. I was SO excited that this was the first well baby check-up that we've had after which we did not have additional bloodwork, ECG, specialists appointments, etc. Ethan just had to get three shots, and we were on our way back home. No follow-up needed until his 18 month appointment. Woo hoo! I realized too that 2008 is going to be a leap year as his 18 month appointment is scheduled for February 29th.

Visit to the Ophthalmologist (for Mommy this Time) and Fascination with Buttons

I had an appointment at the ophthalmologist today that was long overdue. My last visit had been 3 years ago almost to the day. Anyhow, I finally got around to making the appointment and Mom and Dad babysat Ethan for me. Fortunately I was informed that my right eye sees 20/15 and my left eye only has very minor nearsightedness. I consider myself incredibly blessed because the rest of my family has an array of eye issues: cataracts, astigmatism, trifocals, bifocals...

Ethan has recently developed a fascination with pressing buttons on remotes, phones, TVs, VCRs, fax machines, copiers, you name it! While he was at Mom and Dad's house, he discovered that the power button for their TV was within his reach and enjoyed turning the TV off, and on, and off, and on, and off, and on (you get the point)! I am glad that our TV is still too high off the floor for him to reach, but I'm sure that soon enough he'll be punching all of the buttons at our house too!

First Visit to the Children's Museum

Grandma Q. came to visit over Thanksgiving, and we all decided to check out the Children's Museum while she was here. This was the first time that I had been there in about 10 years, but we used to go fairly often when I was growing up. There is an area designated for children 5 years old and younger, and Ethan seemed to really enjoy it. Below are pictures of him with a waterproof smock on playing with some of the water toys in the Playscape area. At first he was a little unsure what to do with the toys and he just wanted to hold them, but soon he was splashing them in the water and having a good time. He also played with some trains on a train table, rode a little airplane that rocked, and crawled through a really long tunnel by himself. We bought a membership and am sure that we'll be making many more visits in the coming months!

Piggy Back Rides and Massage Chairs

Ethan really enjoys piggy back rides complete with the "horsey" shouting "Wheeeeee!" Ever since he could walk, if we ask if he'd like a ride, he comes running and grabs our shoulders awaiting a piggy back ride. He gets the biggest grin on his face as we run around the house with him on our back.
Ethan also likes to sit in the recliner at my parents house because they have a massage pad attached to it with a remote. Two very interesting things for Ethan- the actual massage and the fun remote that he is allowed to play with!

Unexpected Naked Bum in the Nursery

Ethan has very recently begun to enjoy removing his pajama pants. I'm not sure if this was originally fever-induced (he was too warm in his jammies?) Anyhow, I always check in on Ethan before I go to bed myself, and last night I unexpectedly found that not only had Ethan removed his pajama pants (ones that snap in four places to his pajama top), but for the first time he had also decided to remove his diaper. He was sound asleep with his fleece pj top on, his pants were beside him, and he was hugging his (fortunately dry and clean) diaper. It completely cracked me up to find his little naked bum in the crib. To prevent any mishaps overnight, I got him out of bed and re-diapered and re-panted him in pajama pants made of a lighter fabric (all the while he was fast asleep). Oddly enough though, when I got him up the next morning, he had somehow again removed his pajama pants! Thankfully the diaper was intact though :)

Double the Fun

The ER doctor recommended that I take Ethan in to see his pediatrician a couple days after we took him to the ER. Since the holidays are quickly approaching, I made the appointment for this afternoon. The pediatrician confirmed that Ethan did have a severe ear infection in the left ear, but also said that his right ear is infected too. He thought that the fever was a separate viral issue and that the ear infections were secondary infections due to the congestion caused by the virus. No wonder our little guy was in such bad shape :( Since he's had 5 doses of amoxicillin he has perked up considerably. Hopefully we're on the road to recovery!!

Ethan's First (and Hopefully Last) Trip to the ER

Well, we thought that Ethan's fever had been improving yesterday, but he woke up at 2:30am this morning crying inconsolably, and I had a really hard time getting him back to sleep. He woke again at 6am, and he felt like he was burning up (we again got 104-105 readings on his temp). I quickly got him into the bathtub for another lukewarm bath and dosed him again with Tylenol. Even after the bath and Tylenol, he was still reading 102-103 on the forehead thermometer, so we decided not to wait the couple of hours until our pediatrician's office was open and took him to the ER instead. His temp there was 102, and I was a bit surprised that the Dr. there only examined his ears and listened to his chest. I thought that he might at least look in his mouth/throat to see if that area was inflamed. Anyhow, he thought that one ear looked a couple of shades of red darker than the other, so he might have another ear infection. He thought that the symptoms of the very high fever and clear runny nose indicated a viral infection, but he prescribed an antibiotic just in case anything that is going on with him is bacterial. Ethan slept in my arms for about a half hour this morning, and after waking just cried and cried. He wanted to be held, but when I picked him up, he arched his back and squirmed his way back down. This cycle of wanting to be held/squirming away repeated itself over and over. Poor little guy has had a really rough time for the last 4 days. We hope that having had 3 doses of antibiotic during the day today will help him sleep this evening.

High Fever Scare

Thursday evening Ethan didn't do well sleeping through the night (which is very unusual for him). He woke up 2 or 3 times, and I rocked him back to sleep each time. Friday and Saturday Ethan was not acting like himself, being very clingy and wanting to be held all of the time. He wasn't interested in playing with Waggles or his toys. Friday he was running a low grade (100-101) fever, and he was slow with his eating. That, along with a clear runny nose and slightly swollen gums, led me to believe that this was due to teething. However, Saturday late afternoon Ethan felt like he was burning up, and when we took his temperature with the forehead scanning thermometer, it read between 104 and 107 with even a couple of readings that had no numeric value and just said "HIGH". We thought that couldn't possibly be correct, so I scanned my own forehead for comparison, and it read 98.5 I called the on-call pediatrician right away, and he said to put Ethan in a lukewarm bath and keep his forehead damp. We had been giving him Motrin every 6 hours, but the Dr. recommended Motrin at a higher dose alternating with Tylenol every 3 hours. Poor little guy didn't sleep well Friday night, and Saturday night (following the Dr's instructions), we woke him up every 3 hours to give more medication and gave him 2 more lukewarm baths. His temp came down this morning to 100-ish, but spiked back up into 104-106 range this afternoon. We nearly took him to the ER a couple of times, but we called the pediatrician back and he said that it sounded to him like a nasty virus and that we should keep up what we had been doing (baths/medication) and see how he did over the next couple of hours. Fortunately he started acting much more like himself and his fever came down quite a bit this evening. We are continuing the medication regimen and hope that he is back to 100% soon. I think that this was caused by teething in combination with a viral infection. He was back to playing like normal this evening, but he is refusing to finish his bottles and is also refusing even pureed solid foods. He behaved this way with food the last time that some teeth were close to breaking through the gumline. I'm praying that his temperature stays down and that he's back to eating normally very soon! Seeing him acting so out of character and looking totally miserable this weekend was really scary.

Being Gentle with the Doggie and Toys

We have been working with Ethan to help him understand how to be gentle when he interacts with our dog Waggles. If he starts getting rough with Wags, we remind him to be gentle and show him how to pet the doggie softly. Ethan cracked me up the other day because he was carrying around a rather heavy toy and threw it down in our entryway (on the laminate). It made a huge crashing sound and had the potential to damage the floor, so I asked Ethan to be gentle with his toy. He carefully squatted down next to his toy and started patting it very gently like he does with Wags. I thought that was too cute! :)

Keeping Feet Warm- Any Suggestions?

Ethan has never liked to have things covering his feet: booties-nope, socks-nope, shoes-nope
He takes them off every chance he gets! This wasn't much of a problem when he was younger because it was harder for him to get socks off by himself, and he spent a lot of time in sleepers with built-in feet. But now most of his jammies don't have feet, and he's old enough to remove pretty much whatever we put on his feet by himself. Does anyone have any recommendations of what we can put on his feet (specific brands/styles of socks, shoes, or slippers) to keep them warm that would be difficult for Ethan to take off? Thanks!!

Haircut by Mommy

Ethan was born with a lot of hair, and it never really thinned out that much. His hair grows very, very fast. We have taken him to a hair salon specifically set up for kids a couple of times now, and it runs about $17-20 each time. Since his hair is growing so fast and he'll require many haircuts, I decided to carefully observe his haircut the last time we took him and I tried it on my own today! I set up one of our kitchen chairs with Ethan's portable booster seat on it in front of the TV and put a Praise Baby DVD in. I clipped a towel around Ethan's neck and shoulders, sprayed his hair down, and did my best with our hair shears. It took me almost a half hour because I did little snippets at a time, but I was excited with how well it turned out (since the potential for it to be disastrous was very real). Here is a picture of him with his new shorter hairdo (sorry it's not the best picture- he was very active this morning and I chased him around trying to get a good picture for about 15 minutes before giving up):
Also note the remnant of the nasty bruise above his left eye that he got from his fall on the 5th :(

Giant Goose-egg and Post-Op Visit to the Eye Dr.

We got up bright and early this morning to drive back home from Tennessee (we left early enough to make it home to unpack and then get to Ethan's post-op appointment for his eye surgery at 3:30pm). When we first stepped into our house, I set Ethan down to play in his toy room and started listening to a message on our answering machine. Just seconds later Ethan began wailing (not an "I need something" cry, one that told me that something was very wrong). I picked him up in the toy room and noticed that he had about an inch and a half long vertical purple line on his forehead and the area surrounding it had already swollen more than a centimeter out from the rest of his forehead. I quickly hollered for Dan and called the pediatrician's office. The nurse was very calming and gave me a list of warning signs to look for that would be indicators that he had a concussion. Ironically one was whether the pupils of his eyes were dilated the same. I say "ironically" because we had an appointment scheduled with a pediatric ophthalmologist about an hour after this injury occurred. Fortunately Ethan was back to himself within minutes and just cried when we tried to put ice on his forehead to reduce the swelling. The ophthalmologist later confirmed that he would be fine. The Dr. said that he has several boys of his own and that this goose-egg would probably heal just in time for him to get another one. We still don't know for sure what he fell into, but it was likely the corner of his toy storage unit or our china cabinet. The fact that he was very tired from our drive home probably also contributed to him being less stable on his feet. The ophthalmologist also said that the stent in his eye looked really good and that he would prefer to leave it in for an additional 3 months before they remove it. So Ethan should be stent-free as of February 11th of next year!

Cousins Meeting for the First Time

On our way back from North Carolina, we stopped to visit Dan's brother and sister-in-law (Chris and Julie) and their two boys (Drew and Sam) in Tennessee. We had not yet been able to introduce Ethan to Chris, Julie, Drew, and Sam, so it was really fun to get together with them and for Ethan and Sam to play.

Great Grandma's 90th Birthday Party

Today we spent some time with Great Grandpa and also celebrated Great Grandma's 90th birthday with Dan's family. Great Grandma is currently in a nursing home recovering from some health problems, but we are hopeful that she will be able to return to the assisted living center and rejoin Great Grandpa in the near future.

Great Grandma's 90th birthday party
Ethan and Great Grandpa
Ethan playing with his silver dollars on Great Grandpa's walker and carrying them around
Hanging out with Grandpa

Visit to North Carolina- Meeting Some of Dan's Family for the First Time

Dan, Ethan, and I drove to North Carolina leaving at about 4am this morning. The wee hours of the morning departure worked out really well for our trip to Oklahoma City, so we decided to try it again. It didn't work out quite as well this time, as Ethan amazingly stayed awake the first hour and a half of our drive, so his sleep schedule was off quite a bit that day. Fortunately he was mainly "zoning out" during that time, so he wasn't cranky. We made it to Dan's aunt and uncle's house in about 11 hours with about a 45 minute delay due to a truck that caught on fire on the interstate. This was a very special trip because Ethan was able to meet his great grandparents and Dan's aunts, uncles, and cousins on his dad's side for the first time and to celebrate his great grandma's 90th birthday with Dan's family. It was so much fun to see Ethan and Great Grandpa A. interact and enjoy one another. Great Grandpa gave Ethan 2 silver dollar coins (which he termed his "big money" :), and Ethan had a blast playing with them and clanking them together. I was also able to take a 4 generation picture of the men in Dan's family which was really neat. His family has a 4 generation picture taken when Dan was about 2 years old, and we copied the placement of each of the generations in the picture that we took.

Great Grandpa A. holding Ethan

Several tries at the 4 generation picture (Ethan was being a squirmbug)Ethan carrying around his big money

Ethan's First Artwork

I have been going to a wonderful moms group at our church once a week since September, and Ethan has stayed in their childcare a few times. A fun surprise when I picked him up the other day is that the women taking care of the kids had done an art project with them. This is Ethan's first work of art! :) I think that it is adorable, and it's currently hanging on our fridge. Below is his shiny little handprint:

Dancing Lessons

Few of you may realize that Dan and I have been taking dancing lessons. Here's a video with a demonstration of our skills or lack thereof (Sorry Lori, I swiped the idea from you, but it totally cracked me up!)

Halloween- Handing out Treats

For Halloween we decided that Ethan was too young for trick-or-treating, so we dressed him in costume to help hand out candy to the kids in our neighborhood. He was a bit intimidated at first by the kids in costume coming to our door, but he soon warmed up to the idea and stood at the storm door watching the kids walk by. I bought 4 bags of candy (about 100 pieces), we gave one piece to each trick-or-treater, and we were out within 45 minutes! I would have run out to buy more, but we needed to finish packing for our trip to North Carolina, so we opted to turn the porch light out instead. Here are some pictures of Ethan in costume:

Ethan was a little scared at first and trying to close the front door: